Booming Mexia in the Roaring 20's Page: 3
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Col. Humphreys, who was some-
what down on his luck by that
time, then re-entered the scene,
bought out Sheppard's interest ex-
cept (or three leases, and resumed
drilling.
People still chuckle around
Mexia of how the Colonel hit town
with an aura of big money sur-
rounding him, arranged tor the
well to proceed, then left for an
undisclosed fishing camp down on
the Gulf Coast before anyone came
to and asked to see his cash.
Colonel Fishes
There he.lay low and fished on
an island retreat, to which the
news of the Mexia wildcat was
daily flashed by a cloth signal
waved from the mainland—white
if nothing had been found in the
Rogers well, and finally red when
a show of oil was found early in
November.
Humphreys showed up again at
Mexia, ordered drilling to cease,
began erection of a 1,600-barrei
tank, and completed arrangements
with the Texas Company for a
small pipe line to the field and a
loading rack at Mexia. In addi-
tion, he and Fohs perfected two
new organizations, the Humphreys-
Mexia and the Humphreys-Texas
companies After completing these
organizations, the colonel leased
12,000 acres around the well, in-
cluding acreage along the fault
line on which the wildcat was lo-
cated. and about Mexia and Groes-
beck Then the discovery well was
completed on Nov. 19. 1920.
The Rogers No. 1 justified the
diehards' faith in the area's possi-
bilities But jt was actually a small
producer, averaging only 50 bar-
rels a day. And that was a time
when wide open floW was the rule
and proration was a word yet un-
heard of. It had proved oil existed,
however, and though there wasn't
too much interest at that stage be-
cause of the small production, de-
velopment of the territory swiftly
followed this initial exploration
Fohs and Humphrey started
eight wells simultaneously to prove
up the area, and purchased a 352-
acre refinery site from Joseph
Nussbaum and Company two miles
south of Mexia.
Page 2—S«c. 1—Waco, Texas Thursday, February 10,1955
AS 1921 CROWDS GATHERED
Best Early Mexia Oil Well
Yielded 1,000 Barrels Hour
(Ed. Note: Tills I* the iiecoitd
Id *a Mriei of articles written
about the Mexia oil boom ol the
lMO's. Yesterday's story told of
•vents leading op to the bif pro-
dvoers In the early field.)
By NANINE SIMMONS
Mexia Times-Herald Correspondent
MEXIA, Feb. 10-SPL-Full sig-
nificance of the first oil find at
Mexia began to dawn early in 1921
as Col. Albert E. Humphreys com-
pleted his second producer, the
Blake Smith No. 1, which made
about 200 barrels a day. Occidental
Oil Company's Liles No. 1 one mile
northwest of Mexia, was the third
producer, flowing about 500 bar-
rels a day.
It was on Saturday, May 7, that
the Humphreys Henry No. 1—three-
fourths of a mile south and west
of the Rogers discovery well, came
in a gusher. Its flow of 3,000 bar-
rels a day renewed interest as
people realized Mexia had some-
thing more than a flash in the
pan. And the boom was on.
By Aug. 1, 70 derricks were up
in the new field, railroad cars were
jamming the tracks with machin-
ery and lumber, and the heavy
wooden derricks of that day were
springing up overnight on the west-
ern skyline of no longer sleepy
Mexia.
IS,000 Barrels a Day
Hien came Sunday, Aug. 29,
1921, when "Mexia" became a
synonym for Eldorado and Alad-
din's Cave rolled into one.
For ^iat was the day that West-
ern Oil Company's Julius Desen-
berg No. lv locate^ about two miles
northwest of Mexia, blew in with
38,000 barrels -of oil a day. Only to
be topped later in the day by the
W. L. Adam son No. 1, which blew
over its 110-foot derrick with a
1,000 barrels an hour out-pouring
of liquid gold worth $1 a barrel.
The Adam son well was to prove
the largest producer in the entire
Mexia field.
As news of these two gushers
spread, Wall Street brokers, spe-
cial railroad cars of Pittsburgh
millionaires, and streams of peo-
ple with nothing in their pockets
but hope poured into the 4,000-
population Limestone County cot-
ton town.
Mexia literally bulged at the
seams as hotels, boarding houses,
and private homes were unable to
accommodate the # 50.000 people
who crowded somehow into Mexia.
People slept on the grass, a news-
paper for a pallet, slept in wagons,
the few cars that were around
those days, or just plain did with-
out sleep in the excitement of the
golden opportunities that lay in
every direction.
Mexia Jammed
Transportation facilities were un-
derstandably inadequate, witfc the
Dallas-Houston highway running
through Mexia swamped with peo-
ple and supplies headed for the
exciting new bonanza. By hacks,
buggies, wagons, and a handful of
cars, the whole world poured into
Mexia.
People stood in line for blocks
to get into the post office, and
found it quicker to drive to Worth-
am or Groesbeck, eight miles
north and south bf town, to get
mail rather than wait the hours it
took to work up to the general de-
livery window.
Negro children hawked water—
with no guarantees as to cleanli-
ness—in open buckets with the
price 50c a dipper. Eating was a
major problem as Mexia's facili-
ties for 4,000 proved totally inade-
quate for the crowd of visitors
twelve times that number.
New Wells Dally
New wells blew in daily, with it
not at all unusual to see several
gushers going over the top at one
time. Mexia's "Golden Lane," its
oil producing area that turned
out the heaviest flow, was about
half a mile wide, with the derricks
extending in a continuous line
along the Balcones fault. That
fault was a slippage in the earth
eons before, where oil had col-
lected around 3,100 feet in a sandy
formation called the Woodbine
sand, whose end was blocked by
the slippage. The field ran in a
northeast-southwest area, shaped
like a.cucumber, just on the west-
ern edge of the town of Mexia,
with the major producing area
around seven miles long, but wells
continuing for dose to 20 miles
altogether before dry holes showed
the huge underground reservoir of
oil had played out.
Throughout 1921 the field's oil
output increased steadily, with the
total 4,716,805 barrels for that first
big year. In 1922, Mexia produc-
tion swelled to 35,120,405 barrels,
( with the largest production coming
Feb. 12, 1922, when that single
day's production reached 176,000
barrels of crude oil.
Booklets Production
That was the peak, with the
wasteful dissipation of gas, wild
flow of production regardless, and
wells crammed in as close as the
drillers could afford to put them,
causing pressures to drop. As the
reckless production caused rapid
depletion of the gas pressure, a
corresponding decline in oil pro-
duction followed.
Daily production was off to 108,-
000 barrels by April 8, 1922, falling
rapidly to 66,000 barrels daily by
July 20 that same year, and then
downward from that point on. By
Sept. 17, 1927, daily production was
around 10,000 barrels.
Notwithstanding Mexia's decline,
in 1922 Texas reached new record
in oil production, thanks to Mexia's
yield of over 35,000,000 barrels. The
state's total production for 1922
was 118,684,000 barrels, up 12 per
cent from the year before.
Had proration and some mini-
mum of conservation practices
been in practice in Mexia back in
1921 and 1922, that rich Woodbine
field would have lasted from 50 to
100 years, oil men believe. Instead,
it dwindled steadily, and in recent
years most of the wells have been
stripper, or marginal'wells barely
worth producing.
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Simmons, Nanine. Booming Mexia in the Roaring 20's, book, March 1955; Mexia, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth285884/m1/5/: accessed May 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .